Who’s influencing Trump?
AS the USawaitsanewleaderwho has demonstrated someauthoritarian tendencies (“I alone can fix it”), let’s remember how easily confused wecan be about presidential dominanceofthepolitical system.
Even when presidents are strongly involved, we often mistakenly assume they are getting their way when the opposite might be happening. Take, for example, the question of whether Republicans are standing up to Donald Trump.
The general sense right now is that Re- publicans are fully complying with what the president-elect wants. The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker, writing about Mitt Romney’s dinner with Trump, concluded: “Trump has officially and almost completely cowed the elements of the Republican Party that had shunned the real estate tycoon and reality-television star during the turbulent campaign.”
But reality may be a lot more complicated. The way senators normally influence Cabinet choices isn’t through showdown votes on the Senate floor. It’s by
letting the administration know much earlier in the process which nominees would be difficult to confirm. If the incoming president listens and switches to a pre-approved pick, then it may look as if the Senate is acquiescing to whomever is chosen when in fact senators may have torpedoed several possible choices.
It’s even trickier to sort out whether the president is getting his way on policy. Take Trump’s position on Wall Street regulation. On the one hand, he campaigned against “the swamp,” which seemed to include excessive Wall Street influence; on the other hand, he campaigned against government regulation. So does his naming of people with finance-industry ties to his government mean he is in fact getting his way? Or are traditional Republican interests defeating Trump’s preferences? From the outside, it’s just about impossible to know.
It’s important to be careful to attribute to Trump only those things that clearly demonstrate his influence. Only when we get that right can we assess to what extent Republicans have stood up to Trump.